
p\$L%*Z 



Hollinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1957 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY 



MORRILL N. PACKARD 



AT THE MEETING OF THE 



MARYLAND SOCIETY OF THE 

SONS OF THE AMERICAN 

REVOLUTION 



ON 



FEBRUARY 21, 1914. 



[PUBLISHED BY THE 

MARYLAND SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE 
AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

1914. 






^ 



"MINUTE MEN." 



cTWr. President and Fellow Members : 

The Minute Men of our Revolution, in the more restricted 
sense, were those enlisted and ready for military service at a 
moments notice. 

In a broader view, the Minute Men of that Revolution con- 
sisted of all those patriots enlisted in the cause for which the 
forefathers contended, whether in the military establishment or 
in the field of civil endeavor, who were ready on the moment 
to serve the cause in any emergency in varied capacities. 

The servjce might be a protest against the enforcement of 
oppressive laws and the presence of an excessive military force 
overawing the proper exercise of civil authority in time of 
peace ; the interchanging of sentiments and data ; a warning 
of the movements of invading armies, or the intrigues of 
traitors to the cause ; the establishment of emergency civil 
government ; the marshalling of fighting Minute Men to meet 
an emergency ; supplying the financial needs of a pending 
crisis ; a fearless statement of the rights of men compelling 
the irresistible impulses of liberty ; a fearless defiance of the 
oppressor ; the demand for protection and justice ; a recital 
of wrongs suffered ; the action declaring allegiance forfeited ; 
the assumption of self-reliance, and the assertion of individual 
and uniform liberty as of universal right. 

The idealization of the Minute Men of the Revolution is 
seen the better in James Otis fighting the writs of assistance ; 
Samuel Adams demanding that British troops be withdrawn 
from Boston ; Patluck Henry forcing action against the Stamp 
Act in the Virginia House of Burgesses ; General Warren at 
Bunker Hill ; Captain Parker at Lexington ; Ethan Allen at 
Ticonderoga ; Robert Morris in resourceful financeering ; 
Thomas Paine in cause analysis and appeal, and Thomas 



Jefferson in cause epitome that burst the bounds of the times 
and made immortal precedent. 

They were men of peace, possessed of rare fighting quali- 
ties. They were developing a new country and infusing the 
buoyant spirit of a new idealism into its institutions. They 
were of keen intellect and had a clear knowledge of that for 
which they struggled and fought. Their sturdy convictions 
were coupled with indomitable courage. They sharply dis- 
tinguished just government from the injustices of government. 
They knew that justice in government and loyalty in the gov- 
erned were essential to social order. They were sensitive of 
their rights and vigilant about them. They were advised of 
the trend of public concerns, and deemed the general welfare 
of personal obligation and sacrifice. They possessed the genius 
for initiative, held a firm grasp on opportunity and forced the 
direction of pending events by timely action. They were 
those who kept the vigil of the ages in that twilight hour 
of humanity's golden opportunity for free institutions and 
people's government. In the fuller light of the on-coming 
day when patriots, under the inspiring touch of their genius 
and examples, were fighting for victory, the right to stand 
erect in the full stature of civic manhood, they first saw the 
outlines of colossal achievement for their country and the 
human race in the making. 

To their clearness of vision, a true conception of the vital 
issues, a quickened knowledge of the critical moment for action, 
a keen sense of the relation of the action to the pending crisis 
and the final result and the rapidity of decision of those Min- 
ute Men is due the unstinted honor of igniting and keeping 
aflame the spirit of patriotic endeavor that yielded the sacrifice, 
endured the hardships, renewed flagging courage and failing 
hope and forced the assertion of the right to be a free and inde- 
pendent people into an accomplished fact. 

They first gave concrete expression to the distinctive 
thought, purposes, genius and aspirations of the American 
people and so vitalized them in their time that they have 
characterized the national life and guided its course in magnif- 
icent accomplishments. 



There were two vitally essential and all controlling things 
which were objects of their ardent efforts and which challenged 
to the utmost their sincerity, ingenuity and endurance. They 
were the wresting of sovereignty from the king, and, when 
accomplished, of determining where to repose it and make it 
best serve the rights and liberties of all the people. The clash 
at arms was for the sovereign right to rule ; and the problem 
of the victory was how to chain sovereignty enduringly to the 
service of the whole people. 

Oh ! fickle sovereignty, alike indispensable to masters, op- 
pressors, tyrants and to liberty, justice and sustained civiliza- 
tion. Equally well does it serve the purposes of either. It 
obeys its master with unwavering fidelity. It forges the chains 
of slavery to enrich its masters. It steals the toilers' just 
reward for regal splendor. It sacrifices the bravest for unholy 
conquest and gain. It sends God's noblest to martyrdom at 
the caprice of its possessors. It caters to the whims of imbe- 
cile kings and makes the distress of submissive subjects the 
jest of the royal court. It subjugates and impoverishes whole 
classes, races and nations of men to gratify the avarice and 
ambitions of those who have it. It emancipates the slave. It 
makes liberty the only justification for war. It balances the 
scales of economic and social justice. It makes liberty and 
freedom of conscience cardinal principles in government. It 
transforms the insignia of imperial government into the em- 
blems of democracy. It ennobles manhood ; unburdens the 
people, protects the weak and serving its highest purpose sends 
the unconquerable impulses of liberty into the abodes of wrong 
and injustice everywhere. 

Sovereignty : the indispensable and controlling force in all 
government and yet in its mandates the subservient slave of 
the human will that directs it. A curse or a blessing depen- 
dent upon who directs its operations. The supreme problem 
of the generations of the ages has been to know its safest 
repository, the manner of placing it there and the safest 
methods of holding it under such control and applying it to 
such uses, as will compel the rendition of the best services in 
conserving individual and community interests equitably 
adjusted and secured. 



In the struggle for sovereignty it was of supreme moment, 
that the genius who should lead the armies to victory should, 
in the hour of triumph, prove patriot, remember the cause, the 
impulses, the purposes and the hopes that inspired the conflict 
and could in the sincerity of his devotion to the cause of 
humanity thrust aside the lure of ambition and use his power 
and influence in impressing conquered sovereignty into ser- 
ving those noble purposes. 

The Minute Men discerned such characteristics in one in 
whom the warrior's spirit held unconquerable sway until the 
truce of victory and peace was acclaimed and sovereign power 
was within his grasp, and then with all the force of unsullied 
attainments and unchallenged prestige giving to him the 
chance and ability of retaining it himself, turned mentor, 
guide and statesman and proving himself more illustrious in 
peace than glorious in war denied the opportunity and ren- 
dered immortal service in forging the civic chains that shall 
forever, we hope, hold it in leash to the highest service of 
his country and to posterity. He was the incomparable 
Washington. 

The days of the picturesque martial Minute Men have long 
since passed away. Their deeds made glorious history and 
immortal tradition. The fighting spirit which they first trans- 
lated into true heroism has never faltered in the intervening 
years and still awaits the challenge of tyranny and oppression. 

The days of the civic Minute Men have not passed away 
and will not pass away until liberty is bound in chains, the 
right of self-government denied, the pleading voice for right 
and justice silenced ; and the impulses of men for freedom 
and just government stifled before they find expression. 

The duration of their services will define the life of the 
Republic. 

When sovereignty doffed the crown and sceptre and assumed 
the garb of democracy their protecting vigilance began. 
Impelled by the promptings of their restless patriotism, 
through the decades of national growth, sovereignty has served 
the mandates of the people's will. And now the Republic, 
answering the prophecy of the devotees of liberty who saw it 



only in their visions and the hope of the oppressed of earth 
who would attain its blessings, stands the embodiment of the 
strength, vitality and will of a free and mighty people, and 
challenges and denies, by the glory of its enduring achieve- 
ments and doctrine, that sovereignty is a matter of family 
inheritance and its exercise the divine right of kings. 

When sovereignty had been wrested from the king and 
assumed by the people it was reduced into units and one unit 
given to each citizen. It was so ordered that a majority of 
the units must combine and agree to perform an act of sov- 
ereignty. That majority holds the destiny of the States and 
the Republic. 

The supreme test of our governmental stability will be in 
maintaining a constant, aggressive, self-reliant and logical 
majority of citizens qualified for self-government and having 
ample means and unhindered opportunity for expressing and 
enforcing the sovereign will. 

All the evil tendencies in our bodies politic ; the temporary 
subversion of governmental functions ; the restrictions upon 
the right of franchise ; the suppression of an open and fair 
opportunity for voicing the popular will ; diverting the law 
and public administration to serve private and selfish purposes 
against the public welfare ; the denial of justice; the inva- 
sions of rights and encroachments upon equal opportunity have 
their origin and depend for their success and continuance in 
the neglect to use or in the improper use of the unit of sov- 
ereignty possessed by each citizen or in the abuse of the dele- 
gated use of it by the public servants entrusted with its exer- 
cise in public administrations. 

Those citizens who, possessing the qualities necessary for 
maintaining efficient self-government, fail or refuse to dis- 
charge their full civic duties, or those who, in exercising those 
duties are led away from right action through ignorance, pas- 
sion, prejudice or selfish motives, are solely and directly 
responsible for the abuses in, and the failure of popular repre- 
sentative government. They serve equally well the purposes 
of those politicians who barter and trade for profit and gain in 
the political concerns of the country and the nefarious pur- 



8 

poses of those who acting with them secure special favors and 
privileges from the governments with which to enrich them- 
selves at the expense of the general welfare ; they together 
constitute the negative and destructive forces which portend 
the most menacing dangers to our institutions, and when, if 
ever, the soul of self-imposed and popular government shall 
lie humiliated and crushed beneath the ruins of the temples of 
our liberties, such a calamity will not have been caused by the 
conquest of enemies from without ; but from the operations of 
these disintegrating forces from within. And fickle sover- 
eignty, in that event, would still have been the ever faithful 
servant of its masters. 

The test of our scheme of government being in its stability 
and that stability depending upon the maintenance of a major- 
ity able and capable of enforcing the enactments of liberty and 
justice in every action of the government, then to assure that 
stability there must be enough of citizens to maintain that 
majority who are well informed in matters of public policy, 
well grounded in correct conceptions of the true governing 
principles ; incessantly cautious and of tireless activity. 

No plans of democratic government, no compacts assuring 
individual rights and liberty were ever devised by the genius 
of man that can or will prove effective except by their constant 
use and assertion by those in whose behalf they were made. 

The objects of patriotic endeavor must of necessity, then, 
be first directed to the protection of the right of franchise, 
the means of exercising that right ; the education and train- 
ing of those exercising that right ; and the necessity for the 
fearless and fullest exercise of that right as matters of the most 
vital importance. 

The right to qualify as a voting citizen must be limited to 
fit intelligent and non-criminal manhood only. Intelligence 
is the one absolutely fundamental and indispensable require- 
ment, the possession and wide diffusion of which makes a 
people fit for self-government. A reasonable and fair test of 
intellectual fitness to enter the roster of voting citizenship is 
the only logical way of maintaining the necessary standard of 
intelligent citizenship fitted for self-government. 



The laws governing elections from the first steps in the 
processes of expressing the popular will to the oath of office 
must be sedulously studied, effectively improved and rigidly 
enforced, or else the will of some political adventurer will be 
substituted for the will of the people. These processes are 
the only means the people have in a democracy, other than 
armed revolution, of exercising and directing sovereign power. 
Incomplete, defective, manipulated or unenforced laws con- 
trolling elections afford the opportunity of turning the very 
implements for expressing the popular will into means for 
suppressing it with resulting usurpation. They are the only 
means by which the people can make constitutional govern- 
ment responsive and effective. 

Ignorant, unfit and illiterate voting citizens are a menace 
to democratic government, and that menace increases in 
geometrical ratio as the number of such citizens approaches 
a majority of the whole. This danger can best be avoided 
by a system of free public education, with compulsory attend- 
ance if necessary and the wide dissemination of knowledge 
through written and spoken utterances. 

Effective public schools, an unbridled press and an open 
rostrum must ever be the active means of disseminating 
knowledge. There ought to be established a requirement 
that every person who expects to assume voting citizenship 
shall be given a non-partisan education in the essential princi- 
ples of our plan of government, a training in the duties of 
citizenship and the necessity and importance of exercising 
wisdom, caution and patriotism in the use of the right of 
franchise. So vital a part of a citizen's fitness and training 
ought not longer to be left to chance, neglect or to the vol- 
untary student of the science of government ; but made an 
essential part of the curriculum in every public educational 
institution. 

The failure of the well-qualified citizen to actively partici- 
pate in public concerns and to vote at every election possible 
amounts to civic unrighteousness. Such a failure to perform 
vital civic duties may not be as culpable as the improper use 
of those duties in serving vicious purposes, yet the resulting 



10 

dangers to efficient government therefrom are as eminent. 
For an American citizen to stand idly by and witness the de- 
throning of the Goddess of his liberties and neglect to stay 
the vandal hands is to forget the glory of past heroic self- 
sacrificing achievements, to weaken the present assurances 
and defenses of liberty and to wither the hope and blight the 
promise of future high endeavor in democratic accomplish- 
ment. A compulsory performance of these duties would be 
a confession of declining patriotism. 

A quickened civic consciousness only can compel a constant, 
intelligent and vigilant use of each citizen's unit of sover- 
eignty. The patriotism of peace and civic endeavor must be 
made to always equal the patriotism of war in defense of the 
common heritage. 

A citizenship, the constant majority of which is thus quali- 
fied, empowered and inspirited will hold the States and the 
Republic true to the highest ideals and to the destiny the 
forefathers saw in their visions. That citizenship will cor- 
rectly solve the debatable problems of governmental admin- 
istration. It will find the best plan of taxation. It will 
maintain domestic industrial freedom. It will keep the door 
of equal opportunity wide open. It will enforce a just dis- 
tribution of earnings, profits and increments among the peo- 
ple. It will discover the best method of controlling public 
utilities. It will say how much of personal liberty and prop- 
erty rights shall be yielded up for the common good. It will 
conserve human life and the country's resources. It will 
send messages of peace into the councils of nations illumined 
by the light of liberty and sound the tocsin of war only in 
defense of its citizens and the national integrity. 

My already too-patient listeners you are asking to what 
purpose my theme. It is to define and distinguish the civic 
Minute Men of our times and to urge a larger enrollment 
and better co-operation among them. 

The civic Minute Men of our day and generation are those 
in whom exist the quickened conscience of American citizen- 
ship and whose activities respond to that conscience with un- 
challenged fidelity. 



11 

They are those alert citizens of the loyal crew who navigate 
the ship of state by the chart the people have made, avoiding 
the breakers of imperialism on the left and anarchy on the 
right and hold her course true by the timeliness of their patri- 
otic endeavor. 

They are distinguished by their absolute faith in the ability 
of men to institute and direct government for themselves ; 
a clear conception of the essential principles of responsive 
representative government ; a sincere realization of the high 
privileges and serious responsibilities of a governing citizen- 
ship, and a prompt and aggressive discharge of every civic 
duty with an unselfish regard for the public good. 

Our civic Minute Men are well informed upon matters of 
state. They are leaders in awakening and crystallizing pub- 
lic opinion in matters of legislation, in governmental policies, 
in eradicating public abuses and inequalities in the body 
politic. They do not neglect to qualify as voters because of 
disgusting political evils, the perfidy of political parties or the 
duplicity and deceit of politicians. They do not misuse their 
citizenship by refusing to vote because of fear of being con- 
taminated in so doing. Fear of business and political 
ostracism does not bridle their tongues or restrain their ener- 
gies. The temptations of public office and emoluments do not 
smother the expression of their honest sentiments. They do 
not sacrifice the public welfare for personal profit or party 
gain, nor suffer it to be done by others. They will not yield 
sound convictions in subserviency to political masters, or for 
party expediency. Their fealty to country is never subordi- 
nated to their fealty to party. They do not seek special 
privileges or immunities from their government nor permit 
any resulting benefits therefrom to secure their acquiescence 
in so great an injustice. The honors of public office have no 
charms for them when to attain them they must chain their 
official conduct to the ignoble service of private interests or 
partisan control. They jealously guard the right of manhood 
suffrage as the burnished armor of their ennobling citizenship 
and an untrammelled ballot as the trusty weapon of their 
prowess in the political arena. By the intensity of their efforts 



12 

they compel honesty, integrity and fitness in the men to be 
charged with the conduct of public affairs. The vital neces- 
sity for freedom of conscience makes them the champions of 
this sacred right and the implacable enemies of those who 
would restrict or deny a principle so basic and one so conduc- 
ive to human welfare and happiness. They are the sleepless 
wardens of self-government ; the signal men of human rights ; 
the custodians of the restless spirit of free institutions ; the 
active geniuses of enlightened civic accomplishment. They 
constitute the force which energizes patriotism and which 
quickens the public conscience of the country, upon the 
potency of whose influence and the endurance of whose ser- 
vices depend the attainment of the highest ideals in the insti- 
tutions of freemen. 

The ranks of the civic Minute Men are always and invit- 
ingly wide open for recruits. The act of enrollment is a 
sincere resolve to know the duties of citizenship and to 
promptly, fearlessly and constantly discharge them. The 
equipment, a correct knowledge of public questions and an 
abiding love of country. The service, that of embosoming 
the unit of sovereignty coming down to them sanctified with 
the blood and treasure and self-sacrifice of the forefathers, 
the priceless heritage of their heroism ; and while holding it 
thus inclosed to protect, preserve and garnish it with that 
care, devotion and reverence so vital a talisman of liberty and 
justice deserves ; and when the term of service is ended to 
pass it on to posterity, untarnished with neglect and misuse, 
and embellished with added achievements in amplifying the 
rights and liberties of men, in reinforcing and multiplying 
the institutions wherein liberty abides ; in revising and re- 
fining the criterions of social and industrial justice and in 
raising the standards of civilization nearer to the universal 
acclaim of the brotherhood of man. 

It is a beautiful act to place the lily and the rose on the 
resting places of the patriotic dead. 

It is a graceful tribute to preserve in sculptured art the 
memory of those whose valorous deeds will move the hearts 
of men long after the memorials have corroded into dust. 



13 

It is a loyal service to mark the ways and designate the 
places along and upon which sublime efforts and sacrifices 
first and forever consecrated a continent for the accomplish- 
ments of a people conscience-free and of cast unhindered. 

It is a labor of enduring worth to perpetuate in script and 
tradition the names and records of those who have traveled 
along the rugged paths of patriotic duty and suffering to the 
fields of honor and glory in reproof of the sentiment that 
republics are ungrateful and in tracing the transmission 
and diffusion of their spirit of patriotism through succeeding 
generations. 

The continuing service of the tributes of patriotic gratitude 
is that of impressing upon the exising citizenship of the coun- 
try the irresistible influence of the nation's illustrious dead, 
and the serviceable duty of the civic Minute Men of that 
citizenship is to translate and vitalize the whole volume of 
that influence into the indomitable purposes, the sturdy re- 
solves and the effective mandates of that government those 
patriots created, defended and prospered. 

The sentient soul of that government is the uttered will of 
its citizens finding expression through a dominant majority, 
and its eternal salvation has been, is now and ever will be 
in the keeping of the civic Minute Men. 

Morriix N. Packard. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 710 514 3 



PRESS OF 

John Cox's Sons, 
Baltimore, Mo. 



